Matilda, very much awake, laid still on her bed. The room was dark, save for the early dawn moonlight flooding through her open window, and her curtains fluttered, creating moving shadows. She was warm, dressed only in a tank top and shorts, and covered partially by her white sheet. The only thing she could hear was her own breathing and the occasional animalistic noise from outside. The only thing she saw was her ceiling, shadowed to a dark plane of expansive nothingness that beckoned just above her room, a daunting void of all light. She did not know why she was awake, but there were more than a few times she awoke predawn and stared at the stone above her with a passive visage. 

The room, still dark, was not what the apprentice was thinking about. When she was alone, she thought of her failure back home. There was nothing left in that place; it was merely a husk of living shadows and disintegrating ruins. Fertile fields were ostensibly turned to parched plains of arid grit. There had been a mural in the Threnendold house, on the wall in their large great room, of the city from a distance. The city in the painting had rolling pastures and strong wood buildings, with a happy blazing sun overlooking its vibrant, prosperous main square. But, the young blonde girl wondered how different a view you would get from that same perspective. The pastures would be stretches of wasteland, the main square desolate, and the merciless sun would reign the countryside without relief. The community she had known her whole life was lost to a foe she could not fight at the time of the encounter. Heartless had not been unknown, but they were the problem of a distant yet menacing force much beyond them. They had never learned to fight them. If they had, all of Matilda's siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles would have been able to save the town from complete destruction. They had been complacent. She had been complacent. 

The knight had never questioned her tutelage. She had, in her youth, placed complete and foolish trust in the competency of her family. If she had been more innovative or intelligent, she would have thought of the heartless before they had gotten there. But, then again, she was always the slowest of the bunch. If she had been stronger, then maybe it wouldn't have been for nothing. For Calista, the fall of her hometown had been more than the fall of dwellings and structure; it was the fall of her whole family, parents, brothers, and friends; they all fell in the attack. 

Three of her brothers fell before her eyes, all in fights she was a part of, but couldn’t carry her weight in. Now, in her bed, she watched them, helpless because of her own many weaknesses and horribly pathetic excuses of ‘strengths.’ She had been too weak against the Heartless. They were unaffected by her steel blade, and her magic ran out too quickly to help against the dark tide. She saw her oldest brother cut down by sharp yet edgeless black limbs. She saw her third brother swallowed by the roiling tide of living shadow, and watched in horror as her last living brother closed himself outside the doors of the hall he locked his baby sister and remaining livelihood into. She saw herself trapped in that small corridor, the pleading faces of civilians lining dark, cramped walls. For days, the unearthly sounds of Heartless gnawing on the stone of the very building grated on the edge of reality and reminded her and the civilians that they had very little time to live. She remembered being totally and completely helpless, and seeing the hope and desperation in the eyes of her charges turning to anger and betrayal. 

Matilda blinked and was back in her room, but echoes of the memories of being saved by Keybladers followed her back to reality. She was no hero as they, her experience in becoming one told her that much. She didn’t know why the Keyblade had chosen her, but she didn’t question it. She rarely questioned anything. She honestly thought, with all the lessons in responsibilities she was taught, that her Keyblade was more of a punishment than a blessing. She failed miserably at her purpose in life, so now karma made her relive that failure everyday by showing her how bad she was at all her necessary skills. She sighed and turned to the window; it was growing brighter outside. 

Knowthing that it was only matter of time, Matilda slowly threw her legs over the side of her bed and stood. She stretched, lazily, and dressed in a loose white long-sleeved blouse and black jeans. Her armor was activated by a button on her left shoulder, which harbored a collage of armor spikes and metal accents. She pulled on comfortable shoes, and sat back on her bed with a brush. Mindlessly, the apprentice pulled the brush down and through her disheveled blond hair, watching her door without interest. Her days, as of late, had blurred together into an existence based totally on training: she did little else. She didn’t socialize much, no matter how much she was encouraged to do so, because she was not very good at it. There was not much left to do here other than train and talk. She put her brush down, and pulled her sheet up to make her bed. As she put her comforter back in place, she heard the voice of her Master in addition to a rasp on her door. She straightened her clothes and took a last morning glance around her sparsely decorated room before leaving.

Her steps through the castle were long and swift, and she reached the eating hall quickly. She grabbed her breakfast, a few pieces of different fruit, and made her way across the rows of tables. People always looked at the Keyblades, and hey were well known, but Matilda was made uncomfortable by their stares. Her walk to their table seemed much longer than it actually was. She took a seat unobtrusively as a man in uniform hustled away, looking shaken. Seeing the look on her Master’s face, she would have been shaken too.